Click on the following link to see some of Ellis Island’s most endearing photos take on new meaning as they are enmeshed into the walls and windows of the former immigrant hospital.
While working on the documentary and book, Forgotten Ellis Island, about the Ellis Island Hospital, I often thought of the phrase, “if these walls could talk”… now, with JR’s artistic treatment of these iconic photos, the walls do speak — as faces of the sick immigrant patients peer back. It isn’t hard to imagine their anxiety and fear as they were told their dreams of arriving in America must be deferred –by a mandatory stay in the hospital separated from family, until their disease was cured. 
The Statue of Liberty reflected in a bathroom mirror in the contagious disease ward of the Ellis Island Hospital. Photo by Boston Film & Video
